Stephenson County Board rethinks NIDA deal over Mill Race

FREEPORT — The Stephenson County Board meets tonight to consider stripping Northwest Illinois Development Alliance of its role as the county’s primary marketing agent and developer of Mill Race Crossing.

FREEPORT — The Stephenson County Board meets tonight to consider stripping Northwest Illinois Development Alliance of its role as the county’s primary marketing agent and developer of Mill Race Crossing.

The proposal is the latest flashpoint for the board, whose members have clashed for months over various spending and policy decisions. Deputies were called to the last meeting to quell a particularly nasty argument about the need to fill a vacancy on the board.

The Mill Race Industrial Park has long been a sore point for many board members. The county owes nearly $5 million for the unfinished park, which occupies 40 acres at the northeast corner of Springfield and Lamm roads outside Freeport.

“The basic thing it comes down to is, in the summer of 2005, Mill Race was established,” board member Chris Clukey said. “NIDA has had the responsibility for finding tenants for the park for eight years and hasn’t been able to get anybody in there. The county is paying almost a half a million in debt each year for the land and NIDA hasn’t found a tenant.”

It’s unwise to nix the NIDA arrangement until the county has another broker lined up to market the industrial park, said board Chairman Bill Hadley, who also is a NIDA director.

County Board member “David Martindale has three separate proposals that we haven’t heard about it,” Hadley said. “I’m open to new proposals but I have to hear them first.”

NIDA’s executive director, Dave Young, insists that the group has done what it was asked to do per its agreement with the county. Young is OK with the board hiring another broker to line up tenants at the industrial park, but it’s wrong to believe that NIDA hasn’t lived up to its end of the bargain.

“What will be done with (Mill Race Crossing) and how will it fit into county and community plans for economic development?” he said. “We need to be assured that the board will go through the right processes.”

The Planning and Development Committee voted 4-1 to dissolve the NIDA arrangement.

“County Board members are not experts in economic development,” said County Board member Jeff Mikkelsen, another NIDA board member. “You hire people to do things that you don’t know how to do. There’s no one on the County Board who knows more about economic development than I do, and I still hire people. You hire people to do stuff that you aren’t an expert in.”

The county contributed $100,000 to NIDA in 2012 for community development services but has not budgeted an allocation for this year.

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NIDA is a public-private partnership that aims to attract business to the area. It is governed by 13 board members who represent Freeport and Stephenson County government and the private business sector.

“We either have land that can’t be sold or have people that can’t get us tenants,” Clukey said. “Either way we have to try something new.”

The Stephenson County Board meets at 6:30 tonight in the board room of the Courthouse, 15 N. Galena Ave.

Also on the agenda

The Stephenson County Board is expected to discuss two other matters tonight:

Appointing a replacement for Ashley DeMeester, who resigned April 8 in the wake of a criminal investigation about whether she lived in her district when she was elected in 2012. DeMeester is the daughter of District K board member Jim DeMeester and niece of District L board member Jerry Clay.

Chairman Bill Hadley’s choices for candidates to succeed retiring County Administrator Russell Mulnix. The Finance Committee met May 2 to interview candidates. That meeting ended when board members argued and police were called to resolve the conflict.